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Running a fan may prevent sudden infant death syndrome
"Having a fan running near a sleeping infant was associated with a 72 percent decrease in the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, researchers reported in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. " "Having a fan running near a sleeping infant was associated with a 72 percent decrease in the risk of sudden infant death syndrom... more
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Is TBN related to the British Monarchy?
Just a little observation I made, and It's quite a suspicious discovery indeed. I recently observed TBN"S Emblem or Logo, which consists of A lion and Unicorn to the left and right of a shield, with a crown above and various inscriptions, if you are familiar with symbolism you would know that such a logo is not a logo but is what would be considered a ''Coat Of Arm's'' which is usually associated with Royalty and the Military...Hmmm, why is a Christian Network employing a ''Coat Of Arms''? and are the similarities between the TBN logo and the British Royal coat Of Arms just a coincidence? make your own observations....
The Lion and the Unicorn are time-honoured symbols of the United Kingdom. They are properly speaking heraldic supporters, appearing in the full Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. The lion stands for England and the unicorn for Scotland. The combination therefore dates back to the 1603 accession of James I of England who was already James VI of Scotland.
The Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom is the official coat of arms of the British monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II. These arms are used by the Queen in her official capacity as monarch, and are officially known as her Arms of Dominion. Variants of the Royal Arms are used by other members of the Royal Family; and by the British Government in connection with the administration and government of the country. In Scotland, the Queen has a separate version of the Royal Arms, a variant of which is used by the Scotland Office. Just a little observation I made, and It's quite a suspicious discovery indeed. I recently observed TBN"S Emblem or Logo, wh... more -
California Governor Vetoes Stem Cell Therapies
California's 2004 Proposition 71--embryonic and stem cell research funding-- which was endorsed by Schwarzenegger has now vetoed the a SB 1565 Bill. California's 2004 Proposition 71--embryonic and stem cell research funding-- which was endorsed by Schwarzenegger has now vetoed ... more
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World's Largest Computer Grid Fires Up
Since the LHC ground to an anticlimactic halt in recent weeks to undergo various tweaks and repairs, the world's largest computer grid, which will be used to monitor the collisions and interactions the LHC (once started again) should hopefully create has nonetheless been fired up as planned.
From the LHC:
"Our ability to manage data at this scale is the product of several years of intense testing," said Ian Bird, leader of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid project. "We can routinely process 250,000 jobs a day and we can achieve peaks of 500,000 jobs without problems. A single job can be a calculation lasting several hours or even several days on a single high performance processor. An estimated 100,000 processors are needed to handle all jobs from the LHC experiments."
Let's hope this runs a bit more smoothly than the collider itself so far, eh? Since the LHC ground to an anticlimactic halt in recent weeks to undergo various tweaks and repairs, the world's largest computer... more -
'Safer' test developed for Down's Syndrome
Doctors may soon be able to test pregnant women for signs that their children have Down's syndrome in a less invasive way.
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Herpes linked to brain cancer
Cancer researchers are finally taking seriously a young surgeon’s decade-long hunch that brain tumors are linked to a strain of herpes that lies dormant in 80% of Americans. The physician speculated that brain cancer patients—many of them affluent and educated—were more vulnerable to common viruses such as the herpes CMV strain because of their "hyper-hygienic" lives, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
"I stopped to think, If I was going to cause a brain tumor, what would I be? CMV made a lot of sense,” he said. The link has now been confirmed in at least three new studies, and CMV vaccine trials have begun for chemo patients. Several of them are tumor-free after two years, rare for a cancer that returns within months of treatment in 95% of cases. Cancer researchers are finally taking seriously a young surgeon’s decade-long hunch that brain tumors are linked to a strain of herpes... more -
Toy robot intended to save humans from evil, future bots
When roboticist David Hanson thinks of the future, he fears that man will accidentally create a super-sentient artificial intelligence that is heartless and clinically insane.
So to save the world, he formed Hanson Robotics and built Zeno, a 17-inch robot boy, who smiles, laughs, recognizes your face and remembers your name.
Fending off the end of the world may be a heavy mantle to hang on the shoulders of a 17-inch robot that's still in prototype stage, but Hanson does call Zeno the superhero of the singularity.
"We want to be damn sure that by the time [robots] become as smart as we are, they have a conscience and compassion and that we are friends.," Hanson said. "There's no guarantee. They could be psychotic."
Zeno is himself a visitor from the future — a robot who reached consciousness in 2029, but is found by government web crawlers. From there he's put into a government academy for artificially intelligent robots, where those in charge may have nefarious motives.
"The world will need a superintelligent hero," Hanson said. "Superintelligent agents are also able to spawn technology that could destroy us all."
This narrative, crafted by Hugo award winner Tony Daniel and University of Texas performance professor Thomas Riccio, is intended to make Zeno into a character that people identify with and want to to see develop — something with the depth of a movie character or a figure from a Homerian epic.
That makes Zeno into as much of a sociological experiment as it is a technical marvel or fun toy.
"The idea is to create a cultural phenomenon and accelerate the use and humanization of the technology," Hanson said. "Robots have gotten steadily more capable but humans' expectations that robots should have minds keeps biting robot developers."
Which is to say that Hanson wants Zeno to change robots and humans.
Zeno has charmed visitors at Wired's NextFest tech celebration for the last two years, including an ongoing run in the 2008 pavilion in Chicago's Millennium park (open through Oct. 12).
Still, Zeno is clearly a work in progress, prone to hip problems, battery issues or overly long diatribes about the singularity, when a wink or smile would be more charming.
Zeno already does "know" people, and in his mind, has a knowledge container that stores a photo of the person and details about that person. The next step is getting Zeno to start making theories about the world, discarding the dumb ones and amplifying the plausible ones.
That, according to Hanson, is the essence of intelligence, and once a robot can combine that ability with the knowledge available on the internet, superintelligence won't be far off.
Hanson Robotics hopes to begin selling a mass market version of Zeno for about $300 starting sometime in 2010. When roboticist David Hanson thinks of the future, he fears that man will accidentally create a super-sentient artificial intelligence... more -
German Researcher Wins Nobel Prize
German researcher wins this year's Nobel Prize for his discovery of HPV being related to cervical cancer. His research helped develop the vaccine for HPV which is used in both the US and Europe. German researcher wins this year's Nobel Prize for his discovery of HPV being related to cervical cancer. His research helped de... more
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Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool
New data base lets companies know if their activities threaten rare species.
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Hey Sudan Look Up at the sky you may see a spectacular fireball!
ASTEROID 2008 TC3: A small, newly-discovered asteroid named 2008 TC3 is approaching Earth and chances are good that it will hit. Measuring only a few meters across, the space rock poses no threat to people or structures on the ground, but it should create a spectacular fireball, releasing about a kiloton of energy as it disintegrates and explodes in the high atmosphere. At least one expert estimates that atmospheric entry will occur on Oct 7th at 0246 UTC over northern Sudan. Stay tuned to http://spaceweather.com for more information and updates to this developing story. ASTEROID 2008 TC3: A small, newly-discovered asteroid named 2008 TC3 is approaching Earth and chances are good that it will hit. Measu... more
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The Bleeding Edges of Physics and Metaphysics
Interested in learning about a subject on the bleeding edge of both physics and metaphysics? Look no further.
Written by David Bruce Hughes
Consciousness is the primary issue in human life. Indeed, without consciousness, there are no other issues. Consciousness and its corollaries are fundamental to every thought, word and action. Yet how strange it is that no universally accepted, comprehensive theory of consciousness exists in Western science. The reason for this is clear: until recently, science intentionally restricted its domain to empirical investigations of the manifest objective world, while consciousness is intrinsically subjective and immanent.
However, without a practical theory of consciousness, science cannot adequately explain the world in which we live. Consciousness is the most basic experiential fact of existence. Without a theory of consciousness, Quantum Mechanics in particular has nowhere to turn but to mathematical theories of probability and chance to explain observations of subatomic energy transactions. Einstein famously expressed his discomfort with this by saying, “God does not play dice with the Universe.” Quantum Mechanics cannot predict the behavior of a quantum system until a macroscopic conscious entity interferes with it, decohering the indeterminate superposition of the quantum wave function into a definite classical result by the process of measurement and observation.
Clearly, Quantum Mechanics is missing something; just as clearly, what is missing is a workable theory of consciousness. The sometimes bizarre concepts and calculations of quantum theory all depend on the existence and actions of an observer. Any observer must be conscious, and therefore the consciousness of the observer is critical to the outcome of any quantum experiment. However, so far Quantum Mechanics still treats the observer’s consciousness as a ‘black box,’ as if consciousness were proscribed from serious scientific inquiry. Whether this is a consequence of Western science’s origins as a weapon against the intellectual repression of the Church, or because of materialistic empirical bias of theorists and researchers, is not the issue here. The intent of this work is to present and explore an extant theory of consciousness from an ancient tradition of vital, living importance to hundreds of millions of adherents and practitioners all over the world, and to evaluate its potential value to modern science.
See link above for rest of article. Interested in learning about a subject on the bleeding edge of both physics and metaphysics? Look no further. ... more -
'Therapeutic vaccine' for AIDS within four years, Nobel Prize winner pre...
A French scientist awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering the AIDS virus immediately predicted there would be a "therapeutic vaccine" for the disease within four years.
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 6:27PM BST 06 Oct 2008
Luc Montagnier, director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, shared half the award with Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur for their work in pinpointing the cause of the disease.
The other half was won by Harald zur Hausen of the University of Dusseldorf and a former director of the German Cancer Research Centre, for work on the cause of cervical cancer.
On receiving the honour which comes with an £800,000 cash prize, Montagnier, 76, said a treatment could be possible in the future with a "therapeutic" rather than preventive vaccine for which results might be published in three or four years if financial backing is forthcoming.
A therapeutic vaccine prevents disease from flourishing after it has taken hold.
"I think it will be possible with a therapeutic vaccine rather than preventative vaccinations. We would give it to people who are already infected," he said
The Nobel recognition comes 25 years after Montagnier and his team at the French Pasteur Institute, including Barre-Sinoussi, discovered HIV in his Paris laboratory.
"The discovery was one prerequisite for the current understanding of the biology of the disease and its antiretroviral treatment," the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute said in a statement.
The other half of the Nobel prize was awarded for the German scientist's research that "went against current dogma" and set forth that oncogenic human papilloma virus (HPV) caused cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.
"His discovery has led to characterization of the natural history of HPV infection, an understanding of mechanisms of HPV-induced carcinogenesis and the development of prophylactic vaccines against HPV acquisition," the Assembly said.
Medicine is traditionally the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year.
The prizes for achievement in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel.
The economics prize is a later addition, established by the Swedish Riksbank in 1968.
The Nobel laureate for physics will be announced tomorrow, followed by the chemistry Nobel on Wednesday, literature on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in Oslo. A French scientist awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering the AIDS virus immediately predicted there would be a "th... more -
Ring-cellphone concept
From the report: Even though it's one of the tiniest cell phones you've probably ever seen, it would be difficult to lose this one. As its name implies, the "ring-cellphone" is worn on the finger, and includes all the components of a functional cell phone.
This ring-cellphone concept, designed by industrial designer Tao Ma of Nanjing, China, incorporates fashionable design with technology. The stylish ring is designed to be worn by both men and women on either hand, and features a small round screen that looks like a gem.
The device offers only the most basic communication functions of making or receiving a call. When answering the phone, users draw out a mini-microphone to talk into, and hold it close to their ear to listen. The ring also has tiny buttons, and Tao Ma explains that its operation is simple (though it´s difficult to tell if the phone includes a full number pad or if it uses another dialing scheme). The ring-cellphone can also be charged on a sleek, vase-like charging base.
Tao Ma is previously known in the world of "fashion-tech" as the designer of the Bracelet Phone and the Quartz Tele Concept. He also won the 2004 Sony Ericsson Mobile Phone Design Competition, a contest geared open to participants from universities and colleges in China. From the report: Even though it's one of the tiniest cell phones you've probably ever seen, it would be difficult to lose th... more -
Researchers document world's mammals in crisis
From the report: From majestic African elephants to tiny and often unappreciated rodents, mammals on Earth are in a state of crisis. One in four mammal species on Earth is being pushed to extinction, according to the Global Mammal Assessment, the most comprehensive assessment of the world's mammals.
Writing in the October 10 issue of Science, ("The Status of the World's Land and Marine Mammals: Diversity, Threat, and Knowledge") and unveiling a "Red List" of endangered mammal species (at the International Union for Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain), the researchers who worked on the exhaustive study say that from 25 percent to 36 percent of species may be in danger of extinction.
"It is frightening that after millions and millions of years of evolution that have given rise to the biodiversity of mammals we are perched on a crisis where 25 percent of species are threatened with being lost forever," said Andrew Smith, an Arizona State University professor who played a key role in the mammalian assessment. Smith and his research assistant, Charlotte Johnson, are two of the 103 authors of the Science paper.
The Global Mammal Assessment was conducted by more than 1,800 scientists from more than 130 countries working under the auspices of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It was made possible by the volunteer help of IUCN Species Survival Commission's specialist groups and collaborations between top institutions and universities, including Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, University of Virginia, Conservation International, Sapienza Università di Roma and the Zoological Society of London.
The mammal assessment is the first comprehensive look at the health of terrestrial and marine mammals across the globe. It is a companion assessment to similar documentation of the world's amphibians, released four years ago by IUCN.
"Mammals are important because they play key roles in ecosystems and provide important benefits to humans," Smith explained. "If you lose a mammal, you often are in danger of losing many other species."
The assessment shows that at least 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on Earth are known to be threatened with extinction. At least 76 mammals have become extinct since 1500. The real situation could be much worse as 836 mammals are listed as "data deficient."
The culprits driving this precarious position include habitat loss and over exploitation for terrestrial mammals, and pollution, global warming and over exploitation for marine mammals, Smith said.
Follow link for full article. From the report: From majestic African elephants to tiny and often unappreciated rodents, mammals on Earth are in a state of crisis. O... more -
Scientists Develop Solar Cells With a Twist
US researchers have found a way to make efficient silicon-based solar cells that are flexible enough to be rolled around a pencil and transparent enough to be used to tint windows on buildings or cars.
The finding, reported on Sunday in the journal Nature Materials, offers a new way to process conventional silicon by slicing the brittle wafers into ultrathin bits and carefully transferring them onto a flexible surface.
"We can make it thin enough that we can put it on plastic to make a rollable system. You can make it gray in the form of a film that could be added to architectural glass," said John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the research.
"It opens up spaces on the fronts of buildings as opportunities for solar energy," Rogers said in a telephone interview.
Rogers' team uses a special etching method that slices chips off the surface of a bulk silicon wafer. The sliced chips are 10 to 100 times thinner than the wafer, and the size can be adapted to the application.
Once sliced, a device picks up the bits of silicon chips "like a rubber stamp" and transfers them to a new surface material, Rogers said.
"These silicon solar cells become like a solid ink pad for that rubber stamp. The surface of the wafers after we've done this slicing become almost like an inking pad," he said.
"We just print them down onto a target surface."
The final step is to electrically connect these cells to get power out of them, he said.
Adding flexibility to the material would make the cells far easier to transport. Rogers envisions the material being "rolled up like a carpet and thrown on the truck." US researchers have found a way to make efficient silicon-based solar cells that are flexible enough to be rolled around a pencil and ... more -
20 Things You Didn't Know About...Nothing
1 There is vastly more nothing than something. Roughly 74 percent of the universe is nothing, or what physicists call dark energy; 22 percent is dark matter, particles we cannot see. Only 4 percent is baryonic matter, the stuff we call something.
2 And even something is mostly nothing. Atoms overwhelmingly consist of empty space. Matter's solidity is an illusion caused by the electric fields created by subatomic particles.
3 There is more and more nothing every second. In 1998 astronomers measuring the expansion of the universe determined that dark energy is pushing apart the universe at an ever-accelerating speed. The discovery of nothing--and its ability to influence the fate of the cosmos--is considered the most important astronomical finding of the past decade.
4 But even nothing has a weight. The energy in dark matter is equivalent to a tiny mass; there is about one pound of dark energy in a cube of empty space 250,000 miles on each side.
5 In space, no one can hear you scream: Sound, a mechanical wave, cannot travel through a vacuum. Without matter to vibrate through, there is only silence.
6 So what if Kramer falls in a forest? Luckily, electromagnetic waves, including light and radio waves, need no medium to travel through, letting TV stations broadcast endless reruns of Seinfeld, the show about nothing.
7 Light can travel through a vacuum, but there is nothing to refract it. Alas for extraterrestrial romantics, stars do not twinkle in outer space.
8 Black holes are not holes or voids; they are the exact opposite of nothing, being the densest concentration of mass known in the universe.
9 "Zero" was first seen in cuneiform tablets written around 300 B.C. by Babylonians who used it as a placeholder (to distinguish 36 from 306 or 360, for example). The concept of zero in its mathematical sense was developed in India in the fifth century.
10 Any number divided by zero is . . . nothing, not even zero. The equation is mathematically impossible.
11 It is said that Abdulhamid II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s, had censors expunge references to H2O from chemistry books because he was sure it stood for "Hamid the Second is nothing".
12 Medieval art was mostly flat and two-dimensional until the 15th century, when the Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi conceived of the vanishing point, the place where parallel lines converge into nothingness. This allowed for the development of perspective in art.
13 Aristotle once wrote, "Nature abhors a vacuum," and so did he. His complete rejection of vacuums and voids and his subsequent influence on centuries of learning prevented the adoption of the concept of zero in the Western world until around the 13th century, when Italian bankers found it to be extraordinarily useful in financial transactions.
14 Vacuums do not suck things. They create spaces into which the surrounding atmosphere pushes matter.
15 Creatio ex nihilo, the belief that the world was created out of nothing, is one of the most common themes in ancient myths and religions.
16 Current theories suggest that the universe was created out of a state of vacuum energy, that is, nothing.
17 But to a physicist there is no such thing as nothing. Empty space is instead filled with pairs of particles and antiparticles, called virtual particles, that quickly form and then, in accordance with the law of energy conservation, annihilate each other in about 10-25 second.
18 So Aristotle was right all along.
19 These virtual particles popping in and out of existence create energy. In fact, according to quantum mechanics, the energy contained in all the power plants and nuclear weapons in the world doesn't equal the theoretical energy contained in the empty spaces between these words.
20 In other words, nothing could be the key to the theory of everything. 1 There is vastly more nothing than something. Roughly 74 percent of the universe is nothing, or what physicists call dark energy; 22... more -
Nearly one quarter of world's mammals face extinction, annual 'red list&...
Nearly a quarter of the world's land mammal species are at risk of extinction, and many others may vanish before they are even known to science, according to a major annual survey of global wildlife.
At least 1,141 of the 5,487 known species of mammal are threatened, with 188 listed in the highest risk "critically endangered" category. One in three marine mammals are also threatened, according to the five year review.
The "red list" assessment, conducted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), involved more than 1,700 experts in 130 countries, and confirms the devastating impact of forest clearing, hunting, fisheries, pollution and climate change on the populations and ranges of the world's most studied class of animals. Nearly a quarter of the world's land mammal species are at risk of extinction, and many others may vanish before they are even kn... more -
In Quantum Channels, Zero Plus Zero Can Equal Non-Zero
In quantum channels, zero plus zero can equal non-zero.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists have discovered a strange characteristic of quantum communication channels. If two quantum channels each have a transmission capacity of zero, they may still have a nonzero capacity when used together. This effect, which has no classical counterpart, reveals a new complexity in the fundamental nature of quantum communication.
The coauthors of the study, Graeme Smith of the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and Jon Yard of Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, have published their research in a recent issue of Science.
Smith and Yard explain that one of the most important challenges in designing communication networks of any kind is taking steps to correct for noise. By decreasing noise levels in communication channels, developers can increase channel capacity, which is defined as the number of bits (or qubits, in quantum channels) that one channel can transmit. For a channel with zero capacity, no bits are transmitted.
For several decades, scientists have used a well-known formula developed by Claude Shannon in 1948 for developing error-correction techniques in classical communication channels. This formula guides the design of modern communication schemes used in cell phones, the Internet, and deep-space communication. In this classical formula, capacity is additive: when two channels are used simultaneously to transmit data, the capacities of the channels are added to obtain the total capacity.
But even today, physicists don’t understand quantum communication nearly as well as the classical kind. In the current study, Smith and Yard show that some pairs of zero-capacity channels can have a positive quantum capacity when used together. As the physicists explain, that would be like two cut telephone cables being able to transmit data when used together. Their finding shows two things: that quantum capacity is not additive like classical capacity, and that the quantum capacity of a single channel does not completely specify its capability for transmitting quantum information.
“To me, the strange thing is that you have these two things that you would have thought were useless – I mean, you'd usually think that a zero-capacity channel was good for nothing – and when you put them together, somehow there's a kind of synergy and they develop a very quantifiable value,” Smith told PhysOrg.com. “This doesn't happen when you work with classical channels, and since my intuition was based on that case, I was really surprised when it happened here.”
Article continues at link. In quantum channels, zero plus zero can equal non-zero. ... more -
Nobel prize for viral discoveries
The scientists who discovered HIV will share the Nobel prize for medicine with the expert who linked human papillpoma virus (HPV) to cervical cancer.
Frenchmen Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were recognised for their groundbreaking work in uncovering the virus responsible for Aids.
Harald zur Hausen, of Germany, received the prize for making the link between the HPV and cervical cancer.
More than 25 million people have died of HIV/AIDS since 1981.
Globally, over 40 million people are living with HIV.
See rest at link The scientists who discovered HIV will share the Nobel prize for medicine with the expert who linked human papillpoma virus (HPV) to c... more -
Size of earth in comparison with rest of universe
Fun link to a chart for earth compared with the rest of the universe
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